North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Emotional and Social Development (ESD)

Subdomain: Learning About Feelings

Goal: Children recognize and respond to the needs and feelings of others.

Skill Progression: Recognizes and responds to needs and feelings of others

Age: 4-6 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 4-6 Months.

Responds to specific facial patterns as a having a specific meaning

Situations for Observation of Skill

Watch the child’s facial and body reactions to the adult’s smiling, laughing, anger, or frustration.

Elicitation Strategy

An adult can feign frustration or disgust in a play situation with the infant.

Behavior Observed

The infant searches the adults face (eyes and mouth) for clues to how she should react.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Children and adults both learn to read each other’s cues from facial, body, and vocal expression. If adults do not give clear, readable cues the infant may have a harder time determining affect. Encourage parents to give clear cues with facial expression, vocal intonation, and gestures.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.